Firefly Algorithm: Recent Advances and Applications

Nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms, especially those based on swarm intelligence, have attracted much attention in the last ten years. Firefly algorithm appeared in about five years ago, its literature has expanded dramatically with diverse applications. In this paper, we will briefly review the fundamentals of firefly algorithm together with a selection of recent publications. Then, we discuss the optimality associated with balancing exploration and exploitation, which is essential for all metaheuristic algorithms. By comparing with intermittent search strategy, we conclude that metaheuristics such as firefly algorithm are better than the optimal intermittent search strategy. We also analyse algorithms and their implications for higher-dimensional optimization problems.Comment: 15 page

A Hybrid Chimp Optimization Algorithm and Generalized Normal Distribution Algorithm with Opposition-Based Learning Strategy for Solving Data Clustering Problems

This paper is concerned with data clustering to separate clusters based on the connectivity principle for categorizing similar and dissimilar data into different groups. Although classical clustering algorithms such as K-means are efficient techniques, they often trap in local optima and have a slow convergence rate in solving high-dimensional problems. To address these issues, many successful meta-heuristic optimization algorithms and intelligence-based methods have been introduced to attain the optimal solution in a reasonable time. They are designed to escape from a local optimum problem by allowing flexible movements or random behaviors. In this study, we attempt to conceptualize a powerful approach using the three main components: Chimp Optimization Algorithm (ChOA), Generalized Normal Distribution Algorithm (GNDA), and Opposition-Based Learning (OBL) method. Firstly, two versions of ChOA with two different independent groups' strategies and seven chaotic maps, entitled ChOA(I) and ChOA(II), are presented to achieve the best possible result for data clustering purposes. Secondly, a novel combination of ChOA and GNDA algorithms with the OBL strategy is devised to solve the major shortcomings of the original algorithms. Lastly, the proposed ChOAGNDA method is a Selective Opposition (SO) algorithm based on ChOA and GNDA, which can be used to tackle large and complex real-world optimization problems, particularly data clustering applications. The results are evaluated against seven popular meta-heuristic optimization algorithms and eight recent state-of-the-art clustering techniques. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed work significantly outperforms other existing methods in terms of the achievement in minimizing the Sum of Intra-Cluster Distances (SICD), obtaining the lowest Error Rate (ER), accelerating the convergence speed, and finding the optimal cluster centers.Comment: 48 pages, 14 Tables, 12 Figure

A Survey of Feature Selection Strategies for DNA Microarray Classification

Classification tasks are difficult and challenging in the bioinformatics field, that used to predict or diagnose patients at an early stage of disease by utilizing DNA microarray technology. However, crucial characteristics of DNA microarray technology are a large number of features and small sample sizes, which means the technology confronts a "dimensional curse" in its classification tasks because of the high computational execution needed and the discovery of biomarkers difficult. To reduce the dimensionality of features to find the significant features that can employ feature selection algorithms and not affect the performance of classification tasks. Feature selection helps decrease computational time by removing irrelevant and redundant features from the data. The study aims to briefly survey popular feature selection methods for classifying DNA microarray technology, such as filters, wrappers, embedded, and hybrid approaches. Furthermore, this study describes the steps of the feature selection process used to accomplish classification tasks and their relationships to other components such as datasets, cross-validation, and classifier algorithms. In the case study, we chose four different methods of feature selection on two-DNA microarray datasets to evaluate and discuss their performances, namely classification accuracy, stability, and the subset size of selected features. Keywords: Brief survey; DNA microarray data; feature selection; filter methods; wrapper methods; embedded methods; and hybrid methods. DOI: 10.7176/CEIS/14-2-01 Publication date:March 31st 202

An Improved particle swarm optimization based on lévy flight and simulated annealing for high dimensional optimization problem

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a simple metaheuristic method to implement with robust performance. PSO is regarded as one of the numerous researchers' most well-studied algorithms. However, two of its most fundamental problems remain unresolved. PSO converges onto the local optimum for high-dimensional optimization problems, and it has slow convergence speeds. This paper introduces a new variant of a particle swarm optimization algorithm utilizing Lévy flight-McCulloch, and fast simulated annealing (PSOLFS). The proposed algorithm uses two strategies to address high-dimensional problems: hybrid PSO to define the global search area and fast simulated annealing to refine the visited search region. In this paper, PSOLFS is designed based on a balance between exploration and exploitation. We evaluated the algorithm on 16 benchmark functions for 500 and 1,000 dimension experiments. On 500 dimensions, the algorithm obtains the optimal value on 14 out of 16 functions. On 1,000 dimensions, the algorithm obtains the optimal value on eight benchmark functions and is close to optimal on four others. We also compared PSOLFS with another five PSO variants regarding convergence accuracy and speed. The results demonstrated higher accuracy and faster convergence speed than other PSO variants. Moreover, the results of the Wilcoxon test show a significant difference between PSOLFS and the other PSO variants. Our experiments' findings show that the proposed method enhances the standard PSO by avoiding the local optimum and improving the convergence speed

Development of a Dynamic Cuckoo Search Algorithm

This research is aimed at the developing a modified cuckoo search algorithm called dynamic cuckoo search algorithm (dCSA). The standard cuckoo search algorithm is a metaheuristics search algorithm that mimic the behavior of brood parasitism of some cuckoo species and Levy flight behavior of some fruit flies and birds. It, however uses fixed value for control parameters (control probability and step size) and this method have drawbacks with respect to quality of the solutions and number of iterations to obtain optimal solution. Therefore, the dCSA is developed to address these problems in the CSA by introducing random inertia weight strategy to the control parameters so as to make the control parameters dynamic with respect to the proximity of a cuckoo to the optimal solution. The developed dCSA was compared with CSA using ten benchmark test functions. The results obtained indicated the superiority of dCSA over CSA by generating a near global optimal result for 9 out of the ten benchmark test functions

A hybrid Grey Wolf optimizer with multi-population differential evolution for global optimization problems

The optimization field is the process of solving an optimization problem using an optimization algorithm. Therefore, studying this research field requires to study both of optimization problems and algorithms. In this paper, a hybrid optimization algorithm based on differential evolution (DE) and grey wolf optimizer (GWO) is proposed. The proposed algorithm which is called “MDE-GWONM” is better than the original versions in terms of the balancing between exploration and exploitation. The results of implementing MDE-GWONM over nine benchmark test functions showed the performance is superior as compared to other stat of arts optimization algorithm

Metaheuristics and Chaos Theory

Chaos theory is a novelty approach that has been widely used into various applications. One of the famous applications is the introduction of chaos theory into optimization. Note that chaos theory is highly sensitive to initial condition and has the feature of randomness. As chaos theory has the feature of randomness and dynamical properties, it is easy to accelerate the optimization algorithm convergence and enhance the capability of diversity. In this work, we integrated 10 chaotic maps into several metaheuristic algorithms in order to extensively investigate the effectiveness of chaos theory for improving the search capability. Extensive experiments have been carried out and the results have shown that chaotic optimization can be a very promising tool for solving optimization algorithms